Names

Cousins,
I don't reckon my little hometown of Beloved, Kentucky is much different that most little ol' towns in America.  Why, for the mountains, it is right regular.  There is a Henny Penny restaurant on the edge of town where a cousin of mine, Maggie Bowling works as a roller skatin' waitress.  She is tall, olive skinned with almost black hair an' blue eyes that men would feud for the right to look into.  they serve some of the best broasted chicken over there that I have ever had.

In town there is a small courthouse, not used much since Beloved ain't the county seat, a number of businesses, a Carnagie Library, the Pappy Yokum Masonic Lodge #149, a Baptist Church an' several large homes where the better off folks settled years ago.  Many family members still live in them same houses.

What is odd about my hometown is the tendency for folks to get a hankerin' for high falutin' names.  Some folks hear names when they are away an' bring 'em back to hang on their youngin's.  Now, I'm not talkin' about Bible names like Mrs. Sleepy Jean Gilbert named her youngin's... Adam, Bethany, Caleb, Daniel, Ephriam, Frankencense (a girl they called Frankie), Gideon, Hezekiah, Isme (as in Whoa Is Me - hopin' her husband would stop there), James (her husband didn't stop) and Zachariah... cause she said she weren't goin' through the whole alphabet!

I ain't even talkin' about Lucinda Nutt giving' youngin's her last name as their middle name on birth certificates if the parents couldn't read when she delivered babies in her duties as a midwife.  That is where my cousins P. Nutt Chappell, Hazel Nutt Chappell - who married Woodrow Budder, the Holiness preacher from over to Booger Holler Holiness Church and became Hazel Nutt Budder, their brother Chester Nutt Chappell (called him Ches Nutt)  Walter Nutt Chappell and Cornealius Nutt Chappell.

I'm talkin about names that are just plain wrong... like Chuckie Cheese Murphy, or Tootsie Roll Carpenter, Maytag Gilbert, T. B. Chappell (Taco Bell!!!), Wally Martin Henry (got that one from WalMart), Noxema Wilson, Jack Daniels Davenport, Willy wonka Marshall,  Pasta Fazool Bowling, Boyardee Bishop... and the worst of the bunch ShaNaNa Stephens, her brother DooWop Stephens and GetAJob Stephens, the baby of the family.

It is just wrong to saddle them youngin's with commercial names like that.  Folks make fun, tease an' point in the store at them.

I reckon folks need to go back to traditional mountain names, normal names like... Myrtle, Homer, Hank, Mildred, Jeb, Wilbur, Abner, Clem, Junebug, why, even Scooter is better than Chuckie Cheese Murphy.

Like I said, Beloved is a pretty normal mountain town... its the folks that is odd.

Remember?

Do you remember?
Where you were
Who stood by your side?
When the news came
When you first saw the horror?

It is an image
That is seared
Into the backs of my eyes
Burned into my brain.

Images that will never fade
Shock that doesn't ease
The sight of men, women
Jumping to their death
Can you imagine
A situation
When that is the best option?